Gifts of Yuletide
by rokubi-raijuu
Summary: Christmas among the ShinRa employees isn't as monochromatic as you would perhaps expect. A cute little fluff fic written in anticipation of the winter holidays. Rufus x Tseng. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer:  
><strong>hey again everyone. |D it's me, again, because this pairing can always use more love. xP so I know that the Christmas season isn't for a little while yet, but I could hardly resist. xD (besides, it's not like half of you haven't already started listening to carols. xD)  
>so there you have it! Rufus x Tseng and Merry Early Christmas, everyone! xD<p>

and of course, these characters are owned by lovely squeenix, even if I would love to have them. ;~;

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><p>Winters in Midgar were terribly cold. It was a decidedly odd phenomenon, since the city was pretty much on the same latitude as Costa del Sol on the Western end, which was pretty much warm at all times of the year and rarely ever saw snow. However, it seemed fitting that an industrial city of such advancement and prowess should boast such a frigid climate – the strong, chilly drafts that gusted in from the seaboard ensured that the area was usually quite windy as well.<p>

Still, this hardly kept people from venturing outdoors on this particularly festive day, bundled up tightly in fur coats, hats, and gloves to the point where hardly a strip of skin was showing. Breath spun past chattering teeth and spiraled into the cloudy air to whirl with descending snowflakes, dancing to the orchestra of joyous laughter and friendly banter. Children ran amok on the streets, little legs taking them helter skelter with their friends as content parents followed behind, chatting idly with friends. Boots crunched delicately in the freshly fallen powder that blanketed the whole city in a cloak of ivory. From nearly every windowsill and door frame dangled strings of bright multicolored lights, twinkling like earthly stars dashed with color from a painter's palette.

Most employees had received the day off from work to partake in the atmosphere of cheer and relaxation, but there was hardly time for that up on the seventeenth floor of ShinRa Electric Power Company.

In a certain executive office at the end of the hallway, a man sat alone at his desk, seemingly dwarfed by the sheer scope of his enormous room. The sound of shuffling papers and clicks of a mouse pad accompanied occasionally by voices over a telephone drowned out the sounds of the outdoors, restricted further by the firmly closed and locked window. Otherwise, everything was silent, as it should be. There was no time for celebration and vacation when work had to be done. Just because there was snow on the ground and people felt inclined to give each other gifts didn't mean that mako reactors would stop working and that other companies would stop trying to con him out of his money.

"Of course," a smooth baritone voice spoke into the phone, a hint of a smile playing on devious lips. Clinched. Another advantage secured over his competitor – perhaps this was turning out to be a good Christmas for Rufus after all. "A pleasure doing business with you."

The phone was set softly on its receiver again and the blond turned back to the documents he had been perusing earlier. Tseng had been doing his job well in Junon and Mideel these last few months, "reinforcing company policy", as he liked to call it, over the mako reserves near the southern town. As an area rich with Lifestream essence, Mideel was an important asset for ShinRa and it was imperative that they maintained their foothold in the region. According to these reports, his head Turk was doing a fine job exerting their influence. He would not have expected any less. Tseng had always been reliable, as a bodyguard, as a Turk, as an informant, and perhaps most importantly, as a man.

As a man who had always belonged, body and soul, to Rufus ShinRa.

Christmas had never been nothing more than a name to the President, who had grown up without anything that remotely resembled a functional family. Any hope that love and affection would bless his childhood had been buried with his mother's incognito body when he had been a mere wide-eyed boy. And to say that his father could have granted anything as a substitute was downright laughable. Rufus' memories of Christmas growing up had consisted of nothing more than failed attempts at family dinners that resulted more often than not in heated arguments and riled tempers. If his father was feeling particularly kind (he reminisced with a degree of sardonic cynicism), there might even be an explanation of his latest company plan to the young boy who would struggle to understand and nod in hopes of staying on President ShinRa's good side. As he had grown older, those nervous attempts would then be abandoned in favor of scathing tactical remarks for the sheer purpose of angering the old man more.

Maybe he had always hoped that the President would get so worked up he would die of a heart attack. Who knew? Either way, the forced family interaction that had been equated with Christmas had given the holiday a bad taste in Rufus' mouth. Still, looking out into the streets of Midgar and seeing the lower-class families with their rosy-cheeked children gave the blond no sense of nostalgia or regret. It was merely the way life went.

Power came with sacrifice. He had always known that, and Rufus had never been one for maudlin sentimentalities.

Ice blue eyes flickered to the timestamp at the top of the files in his hand – it read December the 16th. It had been nearly ten days and Tseng had promised in the report that he should return at the end of another two or three weeks.

Rufus merely slipped the papers back into the manila folder and set them aside, taking note of the promised date. There was no disappointment that came with the acknowledgement that Tseng would not be back in time for Christmas; why would there be, when Rufus had never seen the meaningful side of the holiday to begin with? He wasn't even entirely sure Tseng had celebrated Christmas in his home country or did now. Even so, as the blond reached down beneath his desk for another stack of folders by his foot, his eye caught the finely embroidered edge of the ribbon fastened to the top of a gentle cream-colored box resting in the corner of the space beneath his workspace.

Rufus paused and let a tiny sigh slip past his lips as he thought of the expensive dyed chocobo feather coat that lay reverently folded within the box. Perhaps the spirit of Christmas was lost on the blond, but he understood the symbol of the gift-giving, at least. Dealings of a material kind had always come easier to him. Expressing affection with shows of money and goods, he could do. In light of the current circumstances, he wished he had thought to purchase the coat for Tseng prior to his leaving for Junon, but the man had departed back in late September and that would been a touch more premature than Rufus would have liked. Now it would simply have to be given late.

Rufus retrieved the folders of budget reports from their place and set them before him, peeling back the covers and preparing himself for another several hours of relatively dull work looking over calculations. At least it gave him something to do. He had never known what to do with free time, anyway.

But he had hardly flipped to the second page of the report before the sound of his doorknob rattling caught his attention, a split second before the door swung open. Who was daring to barge into his office without knocking, at this time of day? His hand instantly flew to the shotgun kept in the drawer by his side, but the sight before him gave him pause. In more ways than one.

Ridiculous red and white Santa hat sported atop equally as red hair, Reno danced into the room with Elena in tow, a similar piece obscuring most of her blond locks. "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la la!"

Rufus' first instinct was to assume that the redhead was drunk. It was Christmas; it was Reno – it would not have been an inaccurate guess. But one glance at those gleaming peridot eyes told him that the obnoxious Turk was unfortunately rather sober. A scowl fixed itself on the blond's face as he tapped the end of his pen against the stack of papers, watching as the two Turks soon ended their off-tune rendition of Deck the Halls and mercilessly assaulted his eardrums with their version of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. They looked exceptionally jolly considering they had just interrupted Rufus' work, and the President was tempted to fire off a couple rounds of his shotgun at the wall around their heads just to get the point across that now was _not the time._

But just as Reno was reaching the peak of vocal terror with falsetto in that third line of "we wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!" and Rufus was seriously weighing the benefits of his gun idea against the cost of having to repair the plaster of his office wall, a third figure strode through the doorway.

And the President's heart skipped a beat.

Tseng had always been tall, dark, and handsome, but somehow the sight of him again after three months of his absence made him even more so. The blond rose abruptly to his feet – he couldn't stop himself - and the Wutaian's name forced itself past his lips in a breathless exclamation. "Tseng."

His eyes flashed to Reno and Elena once he had realized they had stopped singing, taking in their satisfied grins. So this was why they had appeared so smug. (And no wonder, for Rufus' shocked expression must have been worth more gil than anything in the world.) Regaining his composure, the blond cleared his throat and fixed the head Turk (who looked a little too amused for his own good, Rufus thought) with a hard stare. "You were not due to return for another few weeks."

"Things went more efficiently than anticipated," Tseng answered expertly with that deep, rich resonance that may or may not have always left Rufus a little weak in the knees. "I have come back a little ahead of schedule." When Rufus did nothing but look at him with a mixture of incredulousness and suspicion for a few seconds, Tseng added with a little lift of both eyebrows: "did you want me gone for a while longer, sir?"

What was proud, tight-lipped Rufus supposed to say to that?

Luckily (or perhaps not so luckily), Reno saved him. "C'mon out to the lounge, boss. Take a little break from all that backbreaking work, yo!"

A biting reprimand to mind his own business flew to Rufus' tongue, but Reno and Elena had both vanished out the door before he could form them into words, leaving him with Tseng, who merely smiled – that barely visible quick lift of the mouth that stole the air from the President's very windpipe in the most infuriating way possible – and nodded. "A little festivity might be worth your while, sir, if you would care to join me."

Cursing his inability to resist after Tseng had been gone for so long, Rufus followed after his Turk down the long hallway, to the seventeenth floor lounge area where Reno was already pouring everyone a round of drinks. Elena was assisting Rude in putting up the last few decorations, and there was something maddeningly appreciative in the way that none of the three of them seemed the least bit surprised that he had come. "What is this?" he demanded, irritated glance going from the small Christmas tree in the corner to the lights arranged along the walls and the crude paper snowflakes twirling lazily from the ceiling. ShinRa's purpose was not to associate with the lesser citizens of Midgar in their Christmas spirit, it was a place meant for work. Diligence. Production.

"So this is what you've spent the day doing," he remarked icily, "in place of your jobs, I suppose."

Reno and Rude shared a look, and Elena glanced to the side, avoiding the inevitable anger that would follow. However, Tseng merely chuckled and took Rufus' hand in his own, tugging him gently towards the branch of mistletoe that Rufus had just now noticed, suspended from an overhang between the lounge and the adjoining hallway. The implications washed over him and his fine skin turned a flattering shade of pale crimson, drawing more warm amusement from the Wutaian. Annoyance temporarily dissipated in the face of what was going to happen, Rufus tried to look disapproving. "Tseng," he protested softly, pulling to release his hand from the Turk's grip, though his half-heartedness took any strength from him that would have made the attempt more successful.

But he didn't really mind as much as he let on, and only someone like Tseng would have known that. Tseng, who had been by his side since his earliest days as Vice President and then President of the most powerful company in the world.

There was, of course, no need for the Wutaian to insist, and no other words needed to be exchanged when action could speak volumes. So, beneath the emerald and crimson plant, Tseng elegantly drew Rufus to him. Eyelids fluttered, lips met, and arms reached to secure around waist and neck. Silence descended over the world between them even as both of them knew Reno was undoubtedly catcalling and making all sorts of inappropriate comments behind them. The knowledge only made Rufus blush further, but it was easy to distract himself with the feel of Tseng's mouth on his own – soft and not at all insistent.

When they finally drew apart, Rufus' cheeks had reached a nice shade of strawberry. Normally, he would have looked away in embarrassment, but something in the dark, adoring depths of Tseng's eyes stopped him. _He had missed me too. _

Yes, perhaps work could wait for now. In this moment, Rufus was not President of ShinRa Electric Power Company; he was not the son of a megalomaniac tyrant of a father; he was not the holder of the largest share of monetary profit in the world. He was just a man – a man who was trying so hard to learn to love.

This was what the spirit of Christmas was all about.

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><p>Hope you guys liked it! 8D<p>

Please review if you feel so inclined, to keep me motivated ~ This hopefully won't be the end of my Rufus x Tseng fics. xD

Thanks for taking the time to read, everyone ~ c:


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